Photo by Christina Hughes Babb
Updated: According to police the medical examiner office is working on identifying the body. This story has also been edited to reflect that the address where the body was discovered was 238 W. Tenth, not 237.
Police this Friday morning are investigating the case of a dead body discovered on the roof of an Oak Cliff office building, at the corner of 10th and Madison.
Earlier this morning a local business owner sent the Advocate a snapshot of the body, which we will not describe until police have time to locate and inform the victim’s relatives or loved ones.
By the time we arrive on scene, police were hanging yellow crime tape around the property.
Chad Mason, an employee and resident at the apartment across the street from the gruesome discovery, lives in a fourth floor unit overlooking 10th Street. He told us and detectives that he heard three shots at approximately 3:40 this morning. “I heard pop, pop, pop. It sounded close to my window and I looked at the clock,” he said.
Photo by CHB
He didn’t think to call 911 at the time, after all, pop, pop, pops are not that unusual around here, but he says once he saw the police presence he needed to come down and tell detectives what he knew.
The building where the body was found, 238 West 10th, backs up to the new Pottery for the People space and is across the street from the North Oak Cliff Library.
One nearby property owner who did not want to be named, told us that crime has been rampant in the area for a long time. He says he’s experienced 70 or 80 burglaries among other property crimes since he came to Oak Cliff in 96. He said he had hoped the redevelopment of nearby Bishop Arts District would tamp down crime, but, he says, it has not.
By CHB
The unnamed property owner says of the body found this morning, “this is presumptively a murder based on the bullet casings that were found.”
Police have block off a section of Madison Ave. Homicide detectives White and Morgan told me they weren’t sure when they would be releasing more information to the community about what happened here. We will continue to monitor the situation.
